Justin Read online

  He made no suggestion that they get back on the bed but lay down next to her, spooning her against him, his hand finding her breast.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  “Let you make love to me? I thought that was your idea.”

  “I mean let me see her so close.”

  Deanna shrugged, her body tired. “I didn’t like to see you hurting.”

  She felt Justin’s start, then he was up on his elbow, looking at her, stunned. “It was a wonderful gift, Deanna.”

  “Any time.”

  He let out a long breath and lowered himself to her side again, cradling her into his big body. “This isn’t what I’m supposed to do. Fucking you like that, I mean.”

  “I don’t know. It seemed fine to me. Not that I have any experience.”

  “I pleasure. I make you feel good. But this time, I couldn’t stop myself. I had to have you.”

  Deanna ran her hand across his callused fingers. “I have news for you. I felt good. I . . . well, I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  “I want to make you laugh, and beg, and laugh again.” He wiped a tear from her lashes. “Not cry.”

  “I cried because it was beautiful,” Deanna whispered.

  Justin went silent, his head buried in the curve of her shoulder. She couldn’t see his face in their position, but she felt his breath hot on her back.

  He lay still for so long, that she thought he’d fallen asleep. Then he growled, a rumbling that vibrated, and the next thing she knew, he lifted her in his arms, up off the floor.

  Back to the bed, this time side by side as they’d been on the floor, the mattress cushioning them. Justin got behind her, hooked his leg around hers, and moved her bent knee forward enough to open her to him. His cock, rock-hard again, pressed firmly against her backside, while he teased her opening, then he slid his cock into her pussy.

  Deanna let out a long sigh that ended in a moan. Justin didn’t thrust as much this time—he simply filled her, pressing farther and farther in with each smooth push.

  It didn’t take much until Deanna was coming again, her writhing pulling him deeper. Justin groaned under his breath, holding her in strong arms, his seed once more finding her.

  He was still inside her when Deanna fell asleep, a profound, deep sleep that erased every fear and every dream. Here in the bed of a Shareem, she’d at last found contentment.

  *** *** ***

  When Justin woke again, his body sore and sated, Deanna was gone. She wasn’t in the shower—too bad—not in the living room waiting for him, not in the kitchen trying to scare up something to eat.

  Justin pulled on his tunic and shoes, tied back his hair, and stepped outside into fading daylight. Maybe she’d gone to a vendors for some dinner. The gods knew Justin never had any food in the house.

  The car was gone. Justin stopped, not liking how empty that made him feel. Logically, Deanna could have simply gone to return the car to wherever she’d hired it before she was charged for another day. Justin had been sleeping so hard that she might have shouted in his ears that she was going, and he’d never have heard.

  But Justin knew somehow that she wouldn’t be back tonight.

  He went to the crowded marketplace around the corner, hoping against hope to see his patroller wandering among the stalls. He did see patrollers, two of them, buttoned up, hair in tight buns, but no Deanna.

  “Justin.”

  Justin looked behind him to see an off-world man, taller than most Bor Nargan men, in a dusty pilot’s coverall, his mussed hair light brown, his eyes deep green.

  “Mitch,” Justin grunted. “Didn’t know you were back.”

  “Got here this morning. Rees is looking for you. And me.”

  Justin had no interest in talking to Rees right now, but he figured he might as well get it over with. “If you just got here this morning, why are you out here on the street and not inside doing Judith?”

  “It’s her busiest business time. Thought I’d give her a break.”

  “Nice of you.”

  “I’m a nice guy.”

  Mitch didn’t break a smile as they started down the market street, whose artificial light glittered on tables filled with bright silks, cheap jewelry, fruits from all over the galaxy, piles of exotic spices, and shining mechanical parts. Women in everything from drab work-gray to silks as bright as the jewels they haggled for moved from stall to stall, the richer ones followed by servants who carried all the goods they bought.

  “It’s pretty here, in a weird way,” Mitch said as they walked through the colorful chaos.

  “Weird is right.”

  “Sirius is drab,” Mitch said.

  Yes, everyone wondered why Justin had returned to his native land, leaving the relative freedom of Sirius. Mitch was a laidback guy—very different from Bor Nargan men, even different from men on Sirius, who were pretty much into hard work, their idea pleasure being one beer and a good night’s sleep. Mitch would never directly ask Justin his reasons for returning, but Justin felt his curiosity.

  “Come on,” Justin said. “I bet Rees told us to haul our asses.”

  “True,” Mitch said, finally grinning, and they walked on through the streets, until they reached the basement apartment where Rees lived with his lifemate.

  Rees had lived here for years before he’d met Talan d’Urvey, his lady-love. Talan had a nice big house to herself on a nearby moon, but Rees and she stayed in the apartment when they were in Pas City. Talan seemed to like the tiny place for some reason.

  Talan answered the front door. She was a diminutive woman with red hair, which she wore under a sheer veil, and a smile as warm as her heart.

  She hugged Justin and gave him a kiss on his cheek, then greeted Mitch, without as much touchy-feely.

  Talan led them through the tiny hall to the main room of the apartment. As they entered, Rees turned off whatever he was looking at on his computer and rose to greet them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rees was a bit taller than any of the Shareem, and larger too. He was a level three—or at least, that’s what he told everyone.

  Rees had been an experimental Shareem, a deep, dark secret kept by DNAmo, isolated from the others and put through some hellacious tests. Justin hadn’t even known about Rees at DNAmo, not hearing about him at all until Justin’s return to Bor Narga.

  Rees was currently working on plans to take the Shareem off Bor Narga—permanently. Mitch had agreed to help, and Justin’s part was to contact people he knew on Sirius to ready them for an influx of Shareem.

  Except, Justin had asked Rees to postpone the exodus a while. Once the Shareem left Bor Narga, there was no coming back. Ever.

  After the standard greetings—”How the hell’ve you been?” and shit like that, Rees got down to business.

  “Who is this patroller that keeps following you around?” he asked Justin.

  Justin bristled, protectiveness making him meet Rees’s gaze with a hard one of his own. “Her name’s Deanna.” Justin flashed back to her underneath him on the floor, her breasts moving against him as he loved her. “She’s all right.”

  “She’s a patroller.”

  Rees’s skeptical look was starting to piss him off. “She’s smart and has compassion,” Justin said. “Trust me, she’s fine.”

  “You know we have to go soon. We only have so many windows of opportunity.”

  “I know.”

  Rees looked steadily at him, and Justin returned the stare without moving.

  “What do you hear from Rio?” Mitch asked, breaking the tension.

  Rio was the only Shareem who had ever escaped. He’d had the sense to run off with the daughter of the leader of Ariel, and was now immune from Bor Nargan persecution. Ariel was a fairly open planet, accepting of off-worlders, but they had a policy of letting in only a few new permanent residents per year, and the waiting list to get there was long.

  However, Rio had resources that could help them go elsewhere.
r />   “Rio says that Nella is lining up places we’ll be safe on Station 475. If we get to Sirius and request asylum, from there, we can go anywhere.”

  “I’ve got guys to help with the transport,” Mitch said. “But I don’t want to give them too many details yet. And I can’t guarantee they’ll all be free at the same time.”

  Both men turned to look at Justin, who held up his hands. “I know you’re waiting on me. It’s taking longer to find Lillian than I thought, but I need to find her.”

  “Talan or Bree or Elisa can hire people here to look for her,” Rees said. “She can be transported to wherever we end up.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  Rees went silent. Justin knew Rees was being patient with him and had said he understood, but Rees was right that they couldn’t linger forever.

  And now there was Deanna—the pretty patroller whose job it would be to stop Justin and the other Shareem leaving the planet. She’d be obligated to arrest him and line him up for execution for breaking one of the most basic laws Bor Nargans had about Shareem.

  How could Justin justify endangering all Shareem to have a fling with a patroller? Or because he wanted to stay here and gaze at the daughter he loved?

  He couldn’t.

  “Give me a few days,” Justin said. “And I’ll report what my contacts on Sirius say.”

  “Same here,” Mitch said.

  Rees gave them both a nod.

  After a little more conversation—but not much, because it was clear that Rees wanted them gone—probably so he could screw Talan—Justin and Mitch departed together.

  Mitch said little as they walked back toward Judith’s, and that was fine with Justin. He had too many thoughts for conversation.

  He could still feel Deanna’s warmth around him, could still scent her desire. To help the Shareem stuck on this planet, Justin would have to turn his back on her, and on Lillian, and Sybellie.

  Break a Shareem’s heart.

  He looked at Mitch. “Want to help me find an off-worlder who pissed me off today?”

  “Sure. What did he do?”

  “Was rude to a lady.”

  Deanna had driven off the asshole, but Justin still wanted to kill him. Put your hands on my daughter, and see what happens to you . . .

  “Are you saying the lady didn’t have him arrested? This is Bor Narga.”

  “Long story. I’d like to find him, and explain how I feel about it.”

  Mitch grinned. “Let’s do it.”

  One thing Justin liked about Mitch—the man didn’t demand explanations or waste time arguing. He simply started walking with Justin through the narrow streets toward the space docks and the lodgings for off-worlders there.

  Only the very richest and most important off-worlders were allowed to stay up on the hill, and the guy had looked neither rich nor important. So it was an even bet he’d found a place to stay in the off-world quarter.

  Justin figured that finding the guy was a long shot, but even looking for him made Justin feel better. But then, the man had been an arrogant jerk, and arrogant jerks were bad at keeping low profiles.

  Sure enough, in the fourth bar Mitch and Justin visited, Justin saw the man who’d accosted his daughter.

  The man still wore his dark coverall, and he was being rude to the woman behind the bar. The woman was getting ready to throw his ass out.

  Justin pointed him out, and he and Mitch went to lean on the bar on either side of him. Mitch drawled at the bartender, “Want us to take out the garbage, darlin’?”

  The bartender shrugged. “Fine by me. Just don’t bring patrollers down on me,” she added with a sharp look at Justin.

  The man was too full of himself to understand what was happening until Justin and Mitch seized him between them and dragged him toward the door.

  “What the fuck?” The man tried to struggle, but he was too drunk, the pair of them too strong.

  Justin and Mitch half-carried him into the alley around the corner and threw the man up against a wall. The alley was dark, strewn with garbage and sand, the smell thick.

  “Fine, I’ll go to another bar,” the man said sulkily. “I didn’t like that shithole anyway.”

  “We’re not the bouncers,” Justin said. “I’m the friend of someone you upset today.”

  “Yeah?” The man frowned, as though sifting through all the people he’d upset that day and wondering which one they meant. “Who the hell are you?” He looked Justin up and down. “What the hell are you? You’re not Bor Nargan.”

  “Bor Nargan born and bred,” Justin said. “And really unhappy with you.”

  “Well, you don’t look like the little pussy men who live here. If one of them was your fuckhole, and I made him cry, I don’t care.” The man’s frown cleared. “Or maybe it was the pretty little piece up in the rich town. She your whore? Tell you what, why don’t you let me take a poke with her, and we’ll forget the whole thing—”

  Justin’s punch caught him in the gut, and the man’s breath whooshed out of him. Drunk and stupid.

  Justin punched and kept on punching. The man started to defend himself, fists returning blows, which Justin deftly blocked. Shareem weren’t supposed to be fighters, but Justin had learned fighting out of necessity on the docks of Sirius.

  He blocked and hit, catching the man in the jaw, the face, the gut again. The man fought back somewhat skillfully, in spite of his inebriation, but Justin was sober and very experienced.

  Mitch never jumped in to help, seeming to understand that Justin needed to do this, even if he didn’t know exactly why.

  Justin balled his fist and landed one last, practiced punch to the man’s face. The off-worlder’s head snapped back, then his eyes rolled closed, and he slid down the wall. Nice.

  Justin shook out his hand. “We’re done here,” he said, out of breath.

  “Remind me not to piss you off,” Mitch said, leading the way out of the alley.

  “I will.” Justin caught up to him. “Now, let’s go get drunk.”

  *** *** ***

  Deanna’s mother was having a bad night. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sit still, and couldn’t stop moaning. Deanna and Reda did everything they could, but in the end, Reda ended up tranquilizing her.

  Deanna brushed back her mother’s hair as her face relaxed with the tranq. “I’m sorry, Mama,” she whispered, kissing her cheek.

  “Pretty soon, I won’t be able to look after her by myself,” Reda said, putting away the tranq box. “Oh, don’t look like that, honey. It’s not that I don’t want to, but I don’t have training at that level. And she’ll need more than one person to help her, full time.”

  “I know.”

  Deanna folded her arms tightly over her chest. A few hours ago, she’d felt so wonderful in Justin’s bed, curled back against him, falling asleep with him still inside her. She’d loved to have stayed all night, but she’d needed to return the car and check on her mother and Reda.

  Problems with her mother tonight had brought it home to Deanna that she needed to make things right in her job. She had to keep on getting paid, keep receiving the compensation for her mother’s care. If her mother had to go to fulltime care, that would be even more expensive. Deanna had gotten a settlement from the space station where her mother had stumbled into the radiation repair, but it still wasn’t enough.

  And, Deanna missed her mother. The warmhearted woman who’d raised her was gone, a stranger in her place.

  The sooner Deanna helped Justin find Lillian, the sooner Deanna could get him out of her life and return to normal.

  Normal. Sure.

  Deanna helped Reda make Kayla comfortable in bed, then Deanna went back to her computer to follow up on her search for Lillian.

  After another hour, Deanna was pretty sure she was right about what she’d come up with. At least, it was worth a trip to find out.

  She brought up her communications function and called Justin. No answer.

  She called him again
half an hour later. And again. And again.

  Justin either wasn’t home or wasn’t answering—all night—for whatever reason.

  This was too important, though, to worry that he was avoiding her. She shut down her computer, told Reda she was going out, and headed back to the heart of Pas City as the sky was lightening to gray.

  *** *** ***

  “I’m closed,” the red-haired bartender said. She was clinking glasses and metal tankards behind the bar, shoving them through her sterilizer.

  Deanna glanced at the off-worlder who sat on a barstool, a glass of ale in front of him. He’d had a few, by the look of him, but he managed to pin Deanna with a steady stare.

  He had green eyes, almost emerald in color, startling on a world of dark-eyed people. Deanna had done her research—his name was Mitch and he liked to frequent this bar when he was on Bor Narga.

  “I’m not a customer,” the man said. The fact that he answered for himself, instead of letting a woman do it, also marked him as an off-worlder. “I’m a friend.”

  “All my paperwork is in order,” Judith the bartender said. “And I’m too busy for a spot inspection. Come back tomorrow.”

  Deanna held up her hands. “I’m off duty. I came to find Justin.”

  Judith didn’t stop messing with the glasses. “He lives next door.”

  “I know that. He won’t answer his door.”

  Judith shrugged. “Then he wants to be left alone. He’s had enough trouble with patrollers.”

  Deanna drew a breath, trying to stem her impatience. “I need to see him. I’m helping him with something.” She glanced again at the green-eyed man. “I’m a friend.”

  The man’s interest perked. “Wait a minute. Did a dickhead off-worlder make your life hell sometime today?”

  Deanna remembered the asshole on the Vistara, and the satisfaction she’d taken in making him walk away.

  “Yes, but I took care of it. Why?”

  The man grinned. “I’d say Justin took care of it. It was a thing of beauty.”

  “What was?” Deanna asked in alarm. “What did he do?”